I did my valve cover gasket on my 2002 2.3 the other night, after finishing it up it started really smooth and sounded great, however when i drove it home i noticed quite a bit of white smoke as i pulled into my driveway. I thought it might be from some excess oil/cleaner/gung etc left inside my intake manifold from cleaning or whatever, so i let the truck run for about 20 minutes hoping it would burn off and clear up - no luck. Research ive done indicates that im burning coolant but i don't know how this would happen short of blowing my head gasket, but i also dont understand how my head gasket would blow after driving 2 minutes mostly in neutral right as i pull into my driveway.

Does anyone have any insight? could I have somehow hooked something up wrong that's letting coolant into my fuel system?

Kind of new to this and any help is great help.

Thanks

 

No, I doubt you could mix up hose to cause what you describe
Coolant hoses need CLAMPS to hold them on, vacuum lines do not use clamps

Yes, if you have coolant passages in the intake manifold then it is possible for coolant to leak into a cylinder from a poor gasket seal

If its repeating, then yes there is a problem, if it was a "One Of" then is it possible some water or coolant was in the intake when you installed it?

With engine COLD, you can remove the Degas bottle cap and start the engine, if coolant level in degas bottle starts to rise and you see bubbles then you have a head gasket issue, pressure from a cylinder is being force into the cooling system

 

Hey Ron, thanks for the reply

So if the engine's cold my coolant level should be normal, and only increases and bubble in the expansion tank if there's extra fluid (oil) leaking in from an outside source ie pressure from a cylinder?

I did clean the intake manifold with throttle body cleaner fairly heavily but even if there was excess in there i would expect it to burn off after ~15 minutes?

also I don't think my intake manifold has coolant circulating though it or not but im not 100% it's a 2002 2.3 and i can't find any information, even in the repair manual but as i recall there were only gaskets around each of the 4 ports for the butterfly valves, if there were to be a gasket along the entire perimeter that would make sense to hold coolant in..